Abandoning his wife and children, Aaron Sisson leaves the mining community in pursuit of the 'life single': individual freedom, personal friendship, the 'male power' of passion and art. Playing the flute to pay his way he travels to post-war London, where he mixes with the modern Bohemian set and finds male friendship in Rawdon Lilly. Further travels take him to Milan and Florence ('a town of men') preoccupied with thoughts on the decline of humanity from the Renaissance to the modern age. For Aaron, in his own way, is striving to save civilization. Aaron's Rod was completed in 1921 but was then censored by Lawrence's publishers. This edition of the novel, based on the only authoritative surviving typescript, restores these cut passages and eliminates the errors of previous editions